But since the 1960s, satellites and aircraft with powerful radar devices have discovered more and more lakes buried kilometres beneath the thick ice sheet.
The result sometimes feels less like a machine than like an organic whole, a huge, thick-skulled, powerful animal moving with equal menace and grace through its element.
She had most of the attributes of sainthood: a dauntingly selfless life, devotion to a higher cause, rude single-mindedness, a thick skin, and a capacity to wring the withers of the rich andpowerful.